The Broken Door
by ArkTaisch
Summary: War is hell. Reconstruction isn't always a day at the beach, either. In which the Doctor and Amy pursue a mystery on a planet once ravaged by the Time War. (Written for the WA Broken Object Challenge)


**Continuity note:** set between "Victory of the Daleks" and "The Time of Angels" for the 11th Doctor and Amy.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Doctor Who.

 **Thanks:** to Keiman-and-Kei, for beta-reading.

* * *

 _In darkness stands darkness, a slab of stone older than the universe. Immovable and eternal, it measures two meters tall by two meters wide, with a depth that defies mortal scale._

After the planet burned, after all life was scoured from its surface, a lone survivor crawled from under the ashes and found nothing left of her home except the depthless darkness.

"Hello? Is anyone-?" The words grated in her throat, cut short by the biting fumes that had consumed the atmosphere. She had little hope of answer. Yet. Yet, though she knew she didn't have long, she still lived. Perhaps she was not alone?

 _The stone is not meant to be seen, not meant to be touched. It is the depository of an ancient secret of an ancient race, sealed away at the dawn of civilization._

Was that an opening before her? A trace of light, a breath of air that didn't scorch her lungs, that was all, but it revived her enough to claw herself forward another dragging step. Then another.

 _The seal was never meant to be broken. But in a time of war, a war that threatens everything, every ancient secret finds its use._

It was as if the world had fallen away. She hung in darkness, a mote of life in a vast emptiness. Then the emptiness shrank, split itself in half, and she felt a solid surface underneath her. For what seemed a long time, she lay there, drowning in peace. The darkness reassured her, speaking at a level that transcended language. There was no war here. There was no time. No death. She was safe.

Every reassurance was a lie. The war was everywhere. Life itself was defined by time. No one was safe - and death took the lone survivor in an undoing gentler and more absolute than mere fire.

 _But not every secret fulfills its promise. Ancient or newborn, every being that acts may act in vain. Mistakes are inescapable. Hopes fail, plans fail, weapons are countered, and wars are lost. The dark stone drops from living memory. No one is left to reforge the lock. No one to seal away the forbidden knowledge._

Years passed. Centuries passed. When life returned to the world, the darkness took its toll: in secret, barely noticed, slow and patient as only stone can be. It had once been set to a purpose. It would fulfill that purpose, no matter how long it took.

* * *

"Pond!" The Doctor shouted across the crowded plaza with careless disregard for the ears of anyone unlucky enough to be standing between him and his current traveling companion. "Pond!"

"I'm over here!" Amy Pond was a young human from early twenty-first century Britain, and the Doctor's offer of all of time and space was the ultimate adventure for her, but sometimes - she rolled her eyes - the Time Lord acted just like an over-excited preschooler despite claiming to be about a thousand years old. Half an hour earlier, he had hustled her out of the TARDIS, commanding her to "go mingle, or shop, or whatever you humans do at places like this" while he made a few minor repairs to his ship, delicate repairs that required "complete psychic isolation".

Not that she minded the diversion. The Doctor had already taken her into space and onto a spaceship of the far future, but the Night Market on Dunsbeard Seven was the first place where humans (or even human-like aliens) were a minority. The TARDIS translation circuits made it possible for her to understand the chatter of the crowd and the cries of the hawkers. The wares ranged from musky alien fruit snacks to jewelry made from salvaged power cell crystals to exotic weapons to things she had no clue about. At that point, she had realized that the Doctor had neglected to supply her with any local currency. Typical.

It wasn't a complete loss. Some of the merchants offered free samples. Or perhaps they were cultists recruiting for alien gods. Amy wasn't sure, but just as the Doctor shouted for her, what looked like a humanoid guinea pig handed her a long-stemmed flower, gabbling something about destiny. Yeah, no. Amy thanked the alien, keeping the flower, but turned quickly to make her escape. She headed back to the TARDIS, where the Doctor waited for her with his elbow propped against the frame of the open doorway.

"There you are, Pond. I told you it wouldn't take long. Well, come on, get inside, there's this planet where-" The Doctor stopped abruptly. His eyes boggled and he snatched the flower from Amy. His voice sank and he gave a slight shake of his head. "No. No no no no no. It can't be..."

"What is it?" Amy took the Doctor's volatility in stride, but she wondered at his reaction to what seemed an ordinary flower: six large petals, pale gold in color, vaguely resembling a daylily from Earth.

"Where did you get this, Amy?" His voice dropped into an ominous whisper as he repeated the question, " _Where did you get this flower?_ "

"Someone gave it to me." Amy glanced back across the plaza, but the alien had vanished. "This short, furry guy, some kind of rodent."

"Pakhar. Probably. Don't call them rodents. That's racist," said the Doctor, scanning the crowd even as his fingers tightened on the stem. "Gone now, whoever they were." He glanced down again at the flower, turning it this way and that. "Aha."

"Aha?"

"See this?" He pointed out a small white label stuck underneath one of the petals. It was printed with a compact, complicated black and white design. "Galactic trade code." A quick scan with the sonic screwdriver, and he was hurrying back to the console room to set new coordinates.

Amy followed him inside, shutting the door behind her. It was like walking into another universe. The outside of the Doctor's ship looked like a wooden blue police box, while the inside was an eclectic mish-mash of advanced alien technology. "What's going on, Doctor?"

He glared at her from under his fringe of hair, flipping the sonic screwdriver to point at her. "Pryak Quth. Fourth planet of the Pryak system."

"That's where the flower is from? What is it, exactly?"

"Something that shouldn't exist." The Doctor paused. He carefully laid the flower on the console in front of him. He traced a finger along a petal and took a deep breath before he continued, "A Gallifreyan Flower of Remembrance."

"Gallifreyan?" Amy was startled, recognizing the name of the Doctor's planet. The one that he had said had been destroyed. "Are you sure?"

The Doctor didn't look at her. "Yes." He wrenched a lever and the ship jerked into motion. "They're extinct, yet this one was grown on Pryak Quth. Apparently."

* * *

"Pryak Quth. A young world built on the bones of an old planet," declaimed the Doctor, his tone suggesting an educational holiday for Amy's benefit rather than an investigation of a mystery close to his own hearts. "But some things never change." He flung the door open dramatically and gesticulated. "Such as the human predilection for frolicking on tropical beaches while sipping alcoholic beverages with fruit and little umbrellas." A moment later, he added, "And Zygons, for that matter."

"Zygons?" Amy prepared herself with a hat and a pair of sunglasses and followed the Doctor outside, her feet sinking into the red, fine-grained sand. Yes, there was a sunny beach with gently breaking waves and a line of palm-like trees. Inland, behind the trees, she noted a road and a small town of some kind. Humans (and a variety of aliens) swam or surfed or sat or walked in their colorful beachwear. Pryak Quth was clearly a major tourist destination.

"They have the advantage of being amphibious, you see." Unlike Amy, the Doctor had made no concessions to the climate. He wore his usual button-up shirt, bowtie, and brown tweed jacket.

Amy squinted at the aliens on the beach. "Which ones are Zygons?"

"Maroon-ish, conical head. Covered with suckers, bit like an octopus," began the Doctor, then thought better of it. "No, don't say octopus, that's rude..."

"Never mind, I see them," said Amy. Then she remembered their mission and looked more closely at the vegetation. "This is where the flower came from?"

"Well... somewhere in the vicinity. At least the same continent. The same planet." The Doctor frowned, spinning in place until he decided on a direction. Amy breathed a sigh of relief that it was towards the town rather than the sea. She imagined him absent-mindedly drowning himself in the surf. "I just need to take a few readings. Don't wander off."

While the Doctor zigzagged down the street like a drunken giraffe, waving his sonic screwdriver about and talking to himself, Amy sauntered over to an information booth and flashed a smile at the big, maroon-skinned alien on the other side of the counter. Humans and Zygons seemed to form the majority of the population in this part of Pryak Quth.

The Zygon glanced over at Amy with what was presumably a friendly expression. His voice came out in a sinister hissing whisper. "Hello! May I help you?"

"I don't know. I'm just, er, waiting for my friend to get back." She tried not to stare. Zygon faces all seemed to come across as angry to her human perceptions. "So, where are you from?"

"Sol 3," said the Zygon. "That is, Old Earth."

"I mean, originally." Amy was fairly sure Zygons weren't native to Earth. She would have noticed. "Where are you really from?"

"Earth. My family's lived there for over three thousand years." His expression remained inscrutable, but Amy thought he sounded annoyed.

"Sorry. I didn't mean..." She tried to change the subject. "So how did you end up on Pryak Quth?"

"I signed up with the Sodality of Inanna. They sent me out here as an intern ten years ago and I never left." He slid a holographic brochure across the counter towards her. "Here's a quick overview of the Sodality's program on Pryak Quth."

"I've never heard of them." Amy peered at the brochure. Pryak Quth had been designated as an incubator for the reconstruction of lost biomes. The planet was divided into different zones representing various dead worlds (including one for itself). A corner of the brochure informed her that tours were available at special limited rates if she signed up immediately. Well, it hardly compared to TARDIS travel. For one thing, the view was undoubtedly better. For another, it probably had a better track record of returning on time.

"The Sodality was founded on Old Earth a few decades after the Dalek invasions of the twenty-second century. It was a joint venture between a group of Tellurians and their alien scientific advisor. We restore planets that have been destroyed by war."

Amy nodded. She knew that there had been numerous, terrible wars in the universe, even some that had engulfed the Earth at some point. The Doctor avoided taking her to those times or letting her find out too much, but she could guess from the hints that he had dropped. _Dalek invasions of the twenty-second century_. She tried not to dwell on that tidbit of future history.

The Zygon tapped the brochure. A pie chart appeared. "Ninety percent of our profits go back into funding our restoration projects."

Amy looked out at the street and guessed that most of the people visible were tourists. "Not lacking for money, then."

"Well, this sector is especially popular with Visitors. Some of the other environments are more, ah, challenging." The Zygon swiped a stubby digit through the brochure. "The Swamp of Ussteshk, for example."

"Wetlands are known for having interesting plants not found elsewhere," said Amy optimistically, remembering her science classes. She hadn't slept through _all_ of them.

"Too interesting," said the Zygon glumly. "Ussteshk was known for its giant carnivorous flora and overabundance of flying parasites, all of which the Sodality has recreated with painful accuracy. Also mud. Mud thick enough to eat your boots."

"Sounds pleasant," said Amy, unconsciously rubbing her arms, which itched just from the mention of "flying parasites". "Ah, there's my friend now. Hey, Doctor, should I sign us up for a tour?"

"Tour? We don't have time for a tour. We're going to the Swamp of Ussteshk," announced the Doctor.

"Oh," said Amy, suppressing a groan. The Zygon gave her what she interpreted to be a sympathetic look.

"Just... one thing," he said in a low voice as the Doctor started back towards the TARDIS. "If you see a broken door you don't recognize... walk away. Don't touch it. Don't even look at it."

"A broken door? Which broken door?"

"It could be any door on Pryak Quth." The Zygon shook his head. "I know it sounds weird, but... well, you seem like a nice person."

"Thank you, so do you," said Amy, still confused. "Look, I'm sorry, but my friend..." She glanced towards the Doctor's receding back. "I have to go. Bye!"

* * *

As luck would have it, the Doctor and Amy avoided the carnivorous plants and flying parasites by dint of being arrested within moments of arriving at Ussteshk Village Gamma-1. The village, built on an elevated chunk of rock, served as the ecological control center and main tourist hub for the swamp. Weather satellites maintained the local climate, as the Doctor explained when they walked from the cool interior of the TARDIS into a steaming, misty drizzle.

Amy didn't need to ask about the half dozen Zygons pointing their hands at them, fingers sparking with miniature arcs of lightning. Obviously it was some kind of weapon, and obviously this was what happened to the Doctor every other time he stepped out of the TARDIS. She raised her hands in resignation. The Doctor did the same, adding a cheeky grin.

"Hello, hello, I'm the Doctor and this is my friend Amy," he said.

"You came out of the door," hissed one of the Zygons, presumably their leader. Amy was impressed at the way he made it sound like a crime on the level of, say, genocide.

"Yes. Yes, we did. That's what we do." The Doctor touched the door and wiggled it back and forth. "A door, conveniently separating the inside from the outside while permitting passage in between. Isn't that what they're for?"

"This door was not here a moment ago," said the Zygon.

"That depends on your definition of 'here'-" began the Doctor, then changed tack when the Zygons hissed angrily at him. "Ok, ok, yes, it travels. Don't let it upset you - oh, I see, it does upset you. Now why is that...?"

"The Broken Door," whispered one of the other Zygons. "Is it really the Broken Door? We've never been able to catch it before..."

"It was bound to slip up sometime," hissed another.

" _Broken_ door? No, definitely not. My door. Not broken at all, see?" The Doctor made to demonstrate again, surreptitiously shooing Amy inside the TARDIS. "Let me show you..."

A sizzling bolt struck the door a millimeter from the Doctor's hand. He yelped and released his grip, shaking out his fingers as if to check for damage.

"You will not escape us this time!" rasped the leader.

"'This time'?" mouthed Amy. Someone was very confused. She hoped it wasn't the Doctor. With time travel, maybe they had arrived after they had already been there. One of these days she would make the Doctor explain the rules properly.

"Escape? Me? Furthest thing from my thoughts. Honest." The Doctor clasped his hands together, ignoring the threat of being zapped. "This is the door to my ship and it functions perfectly. Now why don't you tell me about this 'Broken Door' of yours? Maybe I can fix it. I'm good at fixing things. Call me Doctor Fix-it. No, wait, that's a plumbing company. Don't call me Doctor Fix-it."

"You will come with us," ordered the Zygon, not bothering to call them anything at all.

The Doctor deflated. "Oh, very well. Come along, Pond. Maybe there will be tea. And biscuits."

As it turned out, the Zygons were more a vigilante mob than official law enforcement. However, they did convince the Sodality security team to lock the Doctor and Amy in one of the detention cells usually reserved for rowdy tourists. Amy and the Doctor sat down on the hard plastic benches set along the walls, facing each other.

"All right, Doctor." Amy took one last sip of water, then put down the cup. "What the hell is going on?"

"They're under stress due to budget cuts? Water in flimsy paper cups and a packet of mixed nuts - I expected better from the most respected eco-tourism agency in the galaxy," said the Doctor.

"We didn't exactly pay for premium tickets," Amy pointed out. She crumpled the empty packet in her fist. "Never mind the snacks. What about this broken door business? That Zygon at the info-booth said something about a broken door."

"Never heard of it," said the Doctor, but his eyes betrayed the lie. Amy wondered what he suspected that he wouldn't tell her. "It must be serious, though, for them to lock us up in here. They were scared. All of them. They didn't want to say anything in front of the tourists, but something out there has frightened them. Maybe even killed some of them before."

* * *

"Two hundred and three at the last count," said Zebediah, the middle-aged human Sodality security officer, as he manipulated the holographic display flickering in front of him. "Only a few in the first years, but more as the planetary population increased. Mostly humans and Zygons with a few alien Visitors taken. The PR department insisted they be classified as accidental deaths..."

"They were not accidents," hissed Annabel, the Zygon officer, whose age Amy had no way of judging, but guessed to be older than the former intern she had met at the information booth.

" _Incidents_ , then, spread all over the planet," said the Doctor, changing the display to show a map of Pryak Quth. "But limited to this planet?"

"As far as we know," said Annabel. The Zygon's name had caught Amy by surprise. She wondered if her real name was something unpronounceable by humans. Though "the Doctor" didn't exactly sound alien, either. On the other hand, the fact that the Doctor had been invited by the authorities into another investigation didn't surprise Amy. The queen of Starship UK, Winston Churchill, hell, why not the "Sodality of Inanna" too? The Doctor apparently had a reputation. They had been politely summoned to a conference room, where two high-ranking Sodality security officers had met them.

"The Sodality of Inanna recognizes the entity known as 'the Doctor'. We looked up the records," the human officer had told them. "The blue box is a time-traveling spaceship known as a 'TARDIS' and you are a Time Lord. You are known to prefer traveling with human companions. Your appearance matches one of the ones listed. More, there's a personal note from one of our founders."

"Really? What does it say?" the Doctor had asked, rocking forward in his chair, looking smug about his apparent notoriety.

"Not to get in your way and to be ready to contain the inevitable chaos generated by your presence," Zebediah had said dryly. "That you are most dangerous when you're acting in ignorance."

"Oh. Flattering." The Doctor had sat back, making a face. "Fair enough, I suppose."

"Enough chatter." That from Annabel, not one for small talk. "We shall do our best to alleviate your ignorance."

At which point the Doctor had turned to look at Zebediah. "All right, then. Tell me, are you a Zygon?"

"What?" Amy had blinked at the obvious human sitting across from them. "Him?"

"Zygons are shapeshifters, Amy," the Doctor had said, not taking his eyes off Zebediah.

"So are Time Lords, according to our files," Zebediah had said, unperturbed. "But no, I'm not a Zygon."

Must do wonders for their undercover operations, Amy had thought. But, looking at Annabel now as she laid out the Sodality's data and best guesses, point by point, Amy found it nearly impossible to imagine the Zygon in any other shape. And there was another bit of the mystery nagging at her. "What about the 'Broken Door'? What does that have to do with all this?"

"It's an urban legend," said Zebediah. "Something people have made up to explain the disappearances. A well-known psychological defense mechanism."

"Denial is also a defense mechanism," hissed Annabel. "Zygons live longer than humans. We are better at facing the truth."

"Tell me," said the Doctor, his tone flat and serious for once.

"Ever since this world was settled some hundred and fifty years ago, there have been... disappearances," said Zebediah. "We don't _know_ what happened, but..." He shook his head, unwilling to continue.

"He doesn't want to say, because of how we learned the little we do know," said Annabel. "There is a thing... it's forbidden by Sodality regulations."

"What thing?" asked Amy.

"Involving Zygons and humans," said Zebediah with a grimace of distaste. "There's a thing they, we, can do."

Amy's thoughts went in a direction she suddenly didn't want to visualize. "Eww. Really? But..."

"No, it's not quite what you're probably thinking," said Zebediah. "The point is, how can we have witnesses when no one ever came back to tell us what they saw?"

"The psychic link!" said the Doctor, sitting up and snapping his fingers. "Of course."

Annabel nodded. "A Zygon shapeshifter requires a biological template, someone living, to base the image on. The source of the body print normally sleeps in a pod, unharmed. It's not only the physical form that can be copied, but also the thoughts, which means a psychic link. Keeping the source asleep minimizes mental interference."

"As you can imagine, humans tend to find this disturbing, especially the wealthier Visitors. In the interests of harmonious co-existence, the official line is that within the Sodality of Inanna, we wear our true forms," said Zebediah. "But private individuals... well, what can I say? There's no accounting for tastes."

"Imagine a Zygon walking about in the shape of a human. Then the human wakes up in the pod, screaming, from a nightmare," hissed Annabel. "The Zygon is never found again."

"The question is, how much reliance can we put on the testimony of a dreamer? The psychic link translates into metaphor and random imagery in the mind of the human," objected Zebediah. "This has been demonstrated in numerous scientific studies."

"Never mind the studies," said the Doctor, leaning back, chair tilted, with his feet resting on the table. "Tell me about the nightmares."

"It has happened four times," said Annabel. "There is a single element repeated across each nightmare. A door. An ordinary door, but one that the dreamer has never seen before. The door hangs ajar. The dreamer _knows_ that the door is broken, that it cannot be shut, yet the compulsion to try is overwhelming..."

Sounds like a bad case of OCD, thought Amy, but bit her tongue. Two hundred and three people had died.

"And then?" asked the Doctor. He dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward, glancing from Zebediah to Annabel and back again.

"They reach out to the door. And then, nothing. The dreamer wakes up, the Zygon is never found. Inspection of the scene yields no door matching the one seen in the dream," said Zebediah. "And after a decent interval, the missing victim is presumed dead."

As Zebediah and Annabel explained, they had scanned the planet in detail, finding no mysterious doors, alien artifacts, or unknown energy sources.

"It must be well-cloaked," said the Doctor. "Fine. But there's one other thing, which you haven't explained." He drew the pale golden flower (a bit worse for wear) from inside his jacket and tossed it onto the conference table.

Annabel and Zebediah exchanged glances. Zebediah shrugged. Annabel spoke for both of them, "How is this relevant to the disappearances?"

"You tell me," said the Doctor. "This flower came from here. In fact, this very sector, the Swamp of Ussteshk."

"It doesn't come from here. Not from anywhere on Pryak Quth. The flowers are just someone's idea of a joke," said Zebediah.

"Ha, ha," said the Doctor, then shook his head. "Sorry, I don't get it."

"It's an ecologist thing," explained Zebediah. He didn't look particularly amused, but forged on, "The Visitors who have received them all say it was a Sodality Hospitality Engineer who handed the flower to them, a thank you gift at the end of their tour. The point is that they're too thick to notice that it isn't one of our restored lifeforms. I don't condone it, but of course some of our Visitors can be... trying."

"Ha," snorted Amy. Obnoxious tourists were probably another eternal constant of the universe, spawning whenever people had enough time and money to make fools of themselves far away from home.

"No idea who our mystery joker is, though," said Zebediah. "I expect that's part of the fun."

"No. There's more," said the Doctor. He scowled at the flower.

"What more is there?" asked Annabel. "It's a prank. A violation of Sodality regulations, but only a small one."

"It's not a prank. It's a message," said the Doctor. He stood up and began pacing, his hands waving in agitation. "A telepathic compulsion. I can still feel it."

"A message? Who from?" asked Amy. She remained in her chair, craning her neck to watch the Doctor. "And who is it for?"

"Amy, this world was ravaged by war, yes, but what war?" The Doctor answered his own question, his voice grim. "The Last Great Time War. It's a Gallifreyan flower. The message is meant for a Time Lord. 'Remember'."

"Remember what?"

"Remember those who were left behind." He stopped pacing and stared down at the flower. "Remember to return for them."

"But the planet was dead. There isn't anyone to send such a message," said Zebediah.

"Time Lord technology," hissed Annabel. "If this is true... who knows when the message was sent?"

"No," said the Doctor. "The war is timelocked. Nothing could get out. Well, almost nothing." He touched the stem. "But not this. I scanned it before; it hasn't traveled in time."

"So what are we talking about here?" asked Zebediah. "Some kind of automated beacon?"

"I'll know once I've found it," said the Doctor. And that was that. The Doctor headed back into the TARDIS to cobble up some kind of detector, one that could find what the Sodality had missed. When Amy asked him how long it would take, he had mumbled something vague. Hours, at least.

Amy decided to stretch her legs for a bit. There was still most of the afternoon left. The drizzle had dried out for now, the sun shining in patches through a cloudy sky. The swamp almost looked pretty from the scenic overlook at the edge of the village. She could see a wooden boardwalk snaking off into the distance, and a few brave figures scattered along it.

What the hell, why not? thought Amy. It was broad daylight. She would be fine. She descended five flights of stone steps to arrive at the start of the boardwalk. A sign warned Visitors to keep to the path. Another, hand-lettered sign was nailed beneath the official one. It showed a cartoonish skull and crossbones, the words "Beware of the chompers" and beneath that a double row of tally marks. Amy stared at the second sign, thinking that this planet was feeling less paradisiacal by the hour. Even as she moved on, she saw that the pair of tourists behind her were taking pictures of themselves standing next to the sign.

After that, it was almost disappointing to find that the elevated boardwalk kept her well clear of any danger or even inconvenience: some kind of semi-porous force field protected the Visitors. It was possible to leave the path, but the periodic gates were clearly labeled with a risk waiver that had to be accepted before they would unlock. No chance, thought Amy, looking down at the dark, dank puddles of standing water under the boardwalk. Still, there was something hypnotic about the miles of red-purplish alien marshland. She continued on the path as it took her under the shade of a grove of alien trees that stood with their roots in the water and their branches weaving together into a purplish-black canopy.

She heard the buzzing before she saw them: a cloud of jewel-eyed flies swarming in the dappled shadows ahead, just where the trees started thinning out again. Flies? She blinked. Wasn't the force field supposed to keep them out? Then she saw the gate, its indicator light blinking red, meaning it was open.

"Oh, for the love of-" Amy looked around. Some careless tourist must have left the gate open, but she saw no sign of the culprit. Without thinking about it, she moved forward to hit the button to close the gate again. The light stayed red. Then she realized that the gate must be broken, but by the time the implications penetrated her mind, it was too late.

* * *

Amy found herself standing near the TARDIS without remembering how she had got back from the swamp. The area had been cordoned off by striped yellow "CAUTION" tape by the Sodality security forces, but was otherwise ignored. Amy looked around, feeling everything off-kilter without being able to identify a cause. Then the TARDIS door opened and the Doctor stepped out, clutching a bulky alien-looking device to his chest. He looked even more off-kilter than everything else.

Focus, Amy admonished herself. She forced herself to concentrate until the world felt solidly real again.

"Ah, Amy, ready to go? I've constructed a detector... thingy... It detects... things..." The Doctor waved a free hand at his device, fingers getting tangled in a loose wire and inadvertently pulling it out. "Oops. One moment. Let me just plug this back in..."

"That won't be necessary," said Amy. The floating sense of disconnection was back, and she wondered where her words were coming from. She brought her hand out from behind her back and offered the flower she was holding to the Doctor. "I've already found what you're looking for. It's been looking for you, too, you see."

"Oh. Ah. Yes, I see," said the Doctor, his expression changing as he took a step closer and stared into her eyes. "And now that you've found me, you can let Amy go!"

Amy shook her head, taking a step away from the Doctor. She turned, reaching out with the flower as if with a magic wand. A black square took shape, a ponderous weight of blank stone hidden inside its own shadow. Or not so blank. Light seemed to leak from the edges.

"The 'Broken Door'," breathed the Doctor, and Amy knew that this was the true shape of the gate that she had met along the boardwalk. The Doctor moved forward past Amy to lay a hand reverently on the edge of the stone. "Oh, you poor thing. What happened to you? And what have you been doing to the people of this planet?"

Amy lifted the flower and gestured. The blackness expanded, swallowing both of them, and they were elsewhere. They were inside a chamber resembling the TARDIS control room, except cleaner and less cluttered. The Doctor set his makeshift device down and inspected the control panels on the console. Before he could touch anything, metallic cables snaked out from it and wrapped around him, immobilizing him.

"Hey!" protested the Doctor.

"Time Lord. You will not endanger the mission," said Amy. She knew the words were not hers, but they felt right when she spoke them.

"Mission? The mission is over. The _war_ is over," said the Doctor. "Do you understand?"

Amy was silent. Then more words came to her. "While one Time Lord remains, while one Dalek remains, the war is not over. You are here. Do Daleks yet exist?"

The Doctor closed his eyes and he slumped in his restraints. At last, as if the admission were squeezed out of him, he whispered, "Yes."

"Then the fulfillment of the mission falls to you," came Amy's inexorable reply. What mission, she wondered, but whatever spoke through her was oblivious to Amy's curiosity. It wouldn't even let her move of her own volition anymore.

"I am not your crew! I was never assigned to - what mission? What happened to your crew?" asked the Doctor.

"We were attacked. I was damaged. The crew died. The project was lost. I was forced to reconstruct it using available materials," said Amy. _Available materials?_ Oh God. It was talking about the people, wasn't it? Two hundred and three snatched through the Broken Door.

"No. No no no, that's wrong. The emergency protocols - you should have been sent home," said the Doctor, sounding horrified. He must have come to the same conclusion about the _available materials_. "Oh. Damaged. You couldn't travel."

"Only the hostile action displacement system was still operational," agreed Amy.

"Then you should have shut down," said the Doctor. Amy could see him straining against the cables, but it was no use. She wished that he had just lied about the Daleks. Then maybe it, this broken TARDIS, whatever it was, would have released them.

"The presence of the project core made that impossible," said Amy. "There is no alternative except to complete the mission. You are the last material element required. You will achieve victory."

"How? How do you think that's going to happen? Don't you think we _tried_?" said the Doctor. "For centuries, we tried to defeat the Daleks. But they always came back. Every time."

"With this." Amy gestured again and a mechanical arm emerged from the console, bringing out what looked like a bag full of some glowing blue liquid.

The Doctor gave a short laugh of disbelief. "A magic potion? All that technology, all that Time Lord science, and it comes down to a magic potion? What exactly did you harvest from all those innocents you kidnapped?"

"Dreams, hopes, fears, possibilities," said Amy. "Time. Destiny. All the potential, distilled into one solution. Time Lords have not sufficed to win the war. You must become... more." Amy thought it sounded like a comic book. But perhaps Time Lord technology really was that insane. Clarke's law and all that.

"Don't!" shouted the Doctor, but a needle had already been hooked up to his bared arm, a tube connecting it to the bag of liquid. "Amy! You will free-" and then his voice thinned into a pained gasp. Whatever the liquid was, it affected him rapidly.

Then the room went black.

Amy screamed. Then realized that she was able to scream. "Doctor!" Freed of whatever had been controlling her, she stumbled forward into the darkness, holding an arm in front of her. She had to get the Doctor out of here, help him if she could.

"Amy." The Doctor spoke from a point right next to her ear.

She stifled another scream. "Doctor?" She groped around until she felt his sleeve. "What the hell is going on?"

"Shhh. It's all right. Let me get the emergency lighting on." The sonic screwdriver buzzed and a dim greenish glow emanated from the walls. The Doctor was already loose. But how? Amy looked back to where he had been trapped. He was still there.

"Don't worry. She'll be fine," said the Doctor standing next to Amy. He moved forward and worked to release the prisoner.

"She?"

"Annabel." The Doctor eased - Annabel!? - onto the floor, checking her pulse. He muttered, "Come on, come on, that was meant for Gallifreyan physiology, not Zygon. Just shift back, you can throw it off." He didn't give her much time to recover. She had barely morphed back into the by-now familiar large maroon shape when the Doctor was heaving her upright and out the door, babbling a mile a minute. "...shut down in thirty seconds. Sorry. Best I could do. Move, move, move. Pond, you too!"

"Right." Amy took Annabel by the other arm and eased her onto a bench once they were outside. "That was amazing. Like twins. How did you know what to say?"

"Psychic... link," whispered Annabel. "Time Lords... telepathic."

Behind them, the light from the broken TARDIS faded and the dimensions collapsed, leaving behind a solid cube of black stone. The Doctor rapped it with his knuckles. "Perfectly safe now. Right, then, we'll be off, before the paperwork catches up to us."

* * *

Back in the Doctor's TARDIS, Amy watched him whirling about the console in a mad flurry of activity. "So, you had Annabel take your place while you, what, sneaked in and shut down that TARDIS?"

"With a little help from the perception filter I rigged up."

"But it said it couldn't shut down. Something about a 'project core'." Amy could still remember the alien words in her own mouth and suppressed a shudder.

"Yes, I had to extract it before I could do anything else." He fumbled in a pocket and came out with a black cube, a tiny version of the broken TARDIS's final appearance. "This little beauty."

"What is that?" Amy came over to study it more closely, but it seemed innocuous enough.

"A nullstone matrix, grown particle by particle from the remnants of the first universe. Impervious to time distortion and reality shifts," explained the Doctor. "It's a book. That TARDIS was sort of... well..." He waved his hands vaguely. "Like a dust jacket. But, not like a dust jacket. But, if you want to think of it like that..."

"A _book_?"

"A very old book. A forbidden book. They were trying to use its knowledge to create the ultimate Time Lord warrior," said the Doctor. He sighed and flopped into his armchair. He slipped the cube, the book, back into his pocket.

"Would it have worked?" wondered Amy.

The Doctor shook his head. "Wishful thinking. There was a lot of that going around. Sadly, that wasn't even the worst plan the Time Lords came up with."

"What was the worst?"

The Doctor shook his head and didn't answer.

"So what was the book, then? Ye Ancient Gallifreyan Book of War?" joked Amy, trying to cheer him up with a playful punch on the shoulder.

"No. It was a cookbook," said the Doctor. He smiled slightly at her look of disbelief. "It was the Time War. They were really desperate."

Amy was speechless.

The Doctor laughed, his dark mood suddenly dispelled. "Maybe that's why I've always preferred human cuisine. Speaking of which, there's this pizza parlor in New-new-new-new-new-new York..."

And they were off again. It turned out to be something of an adventure, because pizza toppings in New^6 York were rather more interactive than those in twenty-first century Earth. But that's a story for another time.

 _Stashed away in the Doctor's library, the Book waits. For now, it is sealed again. Someday, it will not be. In a long time or a short time, its recipes will be read again. It doesn't matter when. The Book is patient..._

The End


End file.
